The Last of the Celestians
by Nero Vipus
Summary: Extremely short little "connector" piece between Fires of Celestal and my Archangels trilogy. Please leave a review, only takes a second.
1. Chapter 1

**The Celestians**

A planet burned. Fires raged across every continent. Oceans were vaporized by the immense heat. Puddles of what had once been human evaporated into the air. Tanks built to withstand everything thrown at them melted in seconds. Blackened skeletons crumbled to ash inside the tanks' hulls.

In orbit, Battle-Barges of the Adeptus Astartes activated their bombardment cannons, pounding the world to rubble. Buildings collapsed under the high-yield missiles. Massove craters were gouged into the earth. Ancient mountains crumbled beneath the fury of the barrage.

Celestal shattered. The Astartes ships turned away from the spreading rubble and exited into the warp, quickly followed by all but two of the Imperial Fleet. The heavily damaged frigate and mass conveyance ship fled to the single remaining planet in the system. Neither ships' warp drives functioned. The captains had agreed that it was better to allow their human cargo to die fighting than to force them to be torn apart by an abortive warp-jump.

Valkyries and Imperial Landing Craft tore through the planet's atmosphere. Hundreds of ships fled to every corner of the world. Groups of people banded together to fight the coming darkness, while others ran off to find their own hiding spots and die alone. A squad of Guardsmen from the Celestian Eighty-First Infantry Regiment led a small band of civilians into the forest at the edge of their landing site.

One of the refugees, carrying a small baby in her arms, collapsed to the ground. The sergeant of the squad ran over to her the woman. He rolled her onto her back and noticed the glazed look in her eyes. He checked her vitals and shook his head. He picked up the woman's child and ran on.

The skies began to darken. Thousands of Thunderhawks filled the Heavens, descending upon the planet like birds of prey. Having feasted on the souls of the crewmen on the ships in orbit, the servants of Chaos slavered for more. The skies began to be tinged with red as the ships soared over the ground, hunting down and slaughtering the last of the Celestians like animals.

Nine Years Later

Silence filled the air. Nothing moved – not even the slightest of breezes stirred the brown, dying grass. A red sun began its slow journey across an even redder sky. Waves of heat emanated from the parched land. The planet Kolthak was all but uninhabited, even by animals. A single person slept under the sun's baleful gaze. A scar graced her right cheek, running from the corner of her right eye to the corner of her down turned mouth.

The girl opened her eyes. Deep brown orbs matching her auburn hair stared out at the world. Her young face frowned in thought. Once again, she'd woken to a question.

Why had she survived for so long, when no one else had? She remembered seeing her adopted father torn apart by a mutated, panther-like creature, one of the few animals left on the planet. Instead of adding the child to its meal, the beast had fled from the girl's cries of anguish. It had almost seemed to fear her.

The child shifted her position on the ground and continued her thoughts. She turned to the question of food. Her family had told her they'd come to this area of the planet because that's where the only remaining animals were. They'd told her that when they were old enough, everyone hunted.

At the age of six, the two soldiers in her small family had taught the girl how to hunt alongside them. They'd given her an old, worn-looking knife on her birthday. Where the rest of the people struggled to bring down the swift moving and highly carnivorous prey, the child had found her quarry completely still. The animal remained unmoving up until the point where she slid the blade of her knife across its throat.

When she hunted, her prey remained stationary. When her small family was attacked, the girl merely had to reveal her presence to the beast and it fled in seeming terror. When she slept, the carnivorous life all around her sensed something within her and left her in peace. And yet, this was not so for the others.

For days, the group would hunt and return either empty handed or without one of their comrades. Soldiers with worn out knives and empty rifles fell like wheat during the rare attacks on their home. One woman had dared to sleep outside the forest alone. Minutes later the group had been woken by her agonized screams.

The girl tried to find a reason for this, but suddenly became uneasy. Something was nearby – she knew it. The child got to her feet and glanced cautiously around. She felt a slight presence in her mind tug her in one direction and recoiled. The presence pulled again, more harshly this time. The girl stumbled back and fell to her knees in pain as the presence sharpened.

'Get out of my mind!'

The dead trunks of the trees around her blew outward with the force of her scream. Massive branches snapped like twigs and flew into the air, crashing down ten metres away. The presence staggered in shock and withdrew from her mind completely.

The girl sensed two others nearby. One was a blinding light of such purity that she nearly cried. The other was tinged with darkness, but held more loyalty and honour than the first would ever know. A branch snapped and the girl spun around. The partially tainted presence stood before her and stared intently at her eyes. She registered the figure's shock before finally being able to see the creature itself.

A figure two-and-a-half metres tall stood before her. The soldier was clad in armour of the deepest black the girl had ever seen. The light around it seemed to be absorbed by the armour, and the child realized that she wasn't actually seeing the soldier himseld, but the outline left by its absence. She also, impossibly, knew the Marine's name.

'Velthos…'

The pure presence the girl had sensed earlier stepped up behind her.

'I am Yaroslav, Chaptermaster of the Archangels. We've come to get you out of here.'

The Marine behind her gently began to lead her away from the dead forest. The girl briefly sensed Velthos' thoughts and read a name amongst all his confusion. Her name.

Yevgeniya Vorink.


	2. Author's Note

_Note from the Author:_ sorry, but this is all that's going to be posted for the Last of the Celestians. Like I said in the description thing, its meant to be an extremely short (emphasis on the word _extremely_) connector between my other stories (Fires of Celestal and the Archangels). If you want more of Yevgeniya, feel free to read the Archangel books first, or find her first reference in Fires of Celestal. Either way, thanks for the reviews.


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